Ute Lemper is legendary, on both stage and screen. This incredible vocalist and renowned songwriter played Sally Bowles to great acclaim in the original Paris production of ‘Cabaret’, winning the Molière Award in 1987 for Best Newcomer, as well as the Olivier Award in 1998 for Best Actress In A Musical for her role of Velma in the revival ‘Chicago’, which saw her perform in both London and New York. She recently released her take on ‘Mack The Knife’, the song composed by Kurt Weill, with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht, for their 1928 music drama, ‘The Threepenny Opera’. We spoke with Ute about her rendition of the song, and her music.
What encouraged you to craft a “radical take” on ‘Mack the Knife’? In what ways does this version differ from the original track?
Together with the arranger David Chesky, we took the song out of the original arrangement and imagined a polyphonic orchestration with programming that involves beats, grooves and a hypnotic vibe. It might be more fun for the contemporary ear to discover Kurt Weill this way
Talk to us about your process of capturing the eerie qualities of the song uniquely. What sonic elements did you include to evoke this feeling?
I used multiple of my vocal tracks to fuse into a vocal illustration, almost like a dialogue embedded in a thick and groovy pulse.
Did your experience with past Cabaret roles influence your perspective and approach to this track and the greater album?
I consider this track not to be in the family of Cabaret songs, but rather has it own rather contemporary language.
How did you go about embodying Macheath in the music video? What aspects of his character were you hoping to reveal in this visual?
We created a contemporary SAGA OF MACK THE KNIFE here in Manhattan on this day, with the NYPD around, in between the Trump Towers and Chase bank…Mack the Knife starts his revolution to overthrow the big shots. The imagery in the music video feels quite symbolic. Check out the neighbourhood…the character uses elements of the Joker, a fearless, crazy anti-hero, having fun wreaking havoc. This time, I went crazy with the styling. I had fun dressing the part
What was the most rewarding part of bringing this story to life? Did you face any unexpected challenges along the way?
In the more hypnotic vibe of the song, I needed to keep the storytelling alive, with the emotional arc from the beginning to the end.
As an artist dedicated to pushing boundaries in your music, does this release mark a new chapter or new direction for your music?
In the eighties, I was on a mission to revive the music of Weimar, especially the music of Kurt Weill. I was a young German actress, living in West Berlin, a divided city, surrounded by the Wall in the middle of the DDR. It was a time when Europe was still amid cold war trauma and Weimar seemed simply a forgotten era that eventually facilitated through its political failures the pathway to Nazi Germany.
I had moved to Berlin in 1984 after studying and performing in Vienna, Austria and I felt that art was a lot more political in West Berlin than in the rest of the world. The devastating face of history was written all over the walls, and my mind and heart rate grew angrier and more rebellious. I studied the music of Weill and conceived my first concert dedicated uniquely to the composer. I wanted to tell his story to the people of my generation, and so I did, in jeans and a T-shirt in little experimental theaters in the dark but feverish West Berlin. Kurt Weill’s story was exemplary as a revolutionary German Jewish composer during Weimar, then persecuted by the Nazis, thrown out of the country but able to pursue and create more fascinating compositions and collaborations in exile in a new world, of course with enormous sacrifice and pain.
When I started to rerecord with UNIVERSAL/DECCA the complex songbook of Kurt Weill and the Berlin Cabaret Songs, it initiated a wave of revival, and the “Dance on the Volcano” of the 20s in Berlin was back in fashion and fascinated a wave of young performers and audiences in its progressivity and exotism. Being the protagonist of all these recordings was a great privilege that came with enormous responsibility. To be a German with an international career was still a complicated affair in those years. I was confronted with stereotypes and a strangely fascinated hostility based on the stigma of the German character and language. I felt sometimes that I had to carry the horrible Nazi history on my shoulders simply by carrying the German passport. The Holocaust inflicted unbearable pain on my soul, and I wished nothing more than to run away from Germany to bring the story of the Jewish composer Kurt Weill with me to fuel a dialogue about the past. This is when the mission became heartfelt and I dedicated many years to travel the world to celebrate his music in recitals or with symphony orchestras, string quartets, or my band to sing the magical creations from Weimar, mostly with Berthold Brecht, as much as the unknown and known song books of the French and American periods.
For more than 40 years, the journey of this simple and brilliant man, who died in America of a broken heart, has inspired my life.
Now, the world is once again in the chaos of more cold and hot wars. The compositions, especially the ones with Bertolt Brecht as the lyricist, were written almost 100 years ago now, yet still breathtaking and unique. There is nothing like it. Rock, Pop, Cabaret and Classical artists have been inspired by his works since the nineties. The biting words meet the melancholic melody, and the harmonic context evokes in a quirky way the colors of Jazz, Ragtime, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky. There is theater in all the stories and political, satirical commentary about morality and a corrupt society. Exotic characters tell us about their survival, rising from the ashes of racism, disadvantage, and neglect. It all sounds oh so contemporary
What advice would you give to fellow artists trying to find their unique voice and style?
Follow your intuition and always be respectful, and put the root and source of the composition and story. Then start your dance on the volcano.
Where do you hope to go musically after ‘Mack the Knife’?
Never know what comes next, but my intuition knows when it is time.
Catch the magnificence of ‘Mack The Knife’ below, and find out more about Ute Lemper and her music online on her official website, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
